meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Darkness Radio

S20 Ep138: The Monsters We Make: Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling w/Rachel Corbett

Darkness Radio

Darkness Radio

Society & Culture, Hobbies, Leisure, Religion & Spirituality, Spirituality, Philosophy

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 157 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

True Crime Tuesday presents The Monsters We Make: Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling with Writer/Columnist/Author, Rachel Corbett!

Criminal profiling―the delicate art of collecting and deciphering the psychological “fingerprints” of the monsters among us―holds an almost mythological status in pop culture. But what exactly is it, does it work, and why is the American public so entranced by it? What do we gain, and endanger, from studying why people commit murder? In The Monsters We Make, author Rachel Corbett explores how criminal profiling became one of society’s most seductive and quixotic undertakings through five significant moments in its history.

Corbett follows Arthur Conan Doyle through the London alleyways where Jack the Ripper butchered his victims, depicts the tailgate outside of Ted Bundy’s execution, and visits the remote Montana cabin where Ted Kaczynski assembled his antiestablishment bombs. Along the way emerge the people who studied and unraveled these cases. We meet self-taught psychologist Henry Murray, who profiled Adolf Hitler at the request of the U.S. government and later profiled his own students―including the future Unabomber―by subjecting them to cruel humiliation experiments. We also meet the prominent Yale psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis, who ended up testifying that Bundy was too sick to stand trial. Finally, Corbett takes the story into our own time, explaining the rise of modern “predictive policing” policies through a study of one Florida family that the analytics targeted―to devastating effects.

With narrative intrigue and deft research, Corbett delves deep into the mythology and reality of criminal profilers, revealing how thin the line can be separating those who do harm and those who claim to stop it.

On Today's True Crime Tuesday, we talk to Rachel about whether criminal profiling is a science or an educated guess!  We also get into the cases in the book involving Ted Bundy, The Unabomber, Henry Murray, and then we talk extensively about Pasco County, Florida and their profiling program trying to prevent criminals from developing a career before they even get started ala Minority Report!

Get your copy of "The Monsters We Make..." here:  https://bit.ly/4r10kPT

PLUS AN ALL-NEW DUMB CRIMES/STUPID CRIMINALS W/JESSICA FREEBURG!

See the video of the Florida man who fell through the ceiling and straight into the arms of a SWAT officer here:  https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/video-florida-man-falls-through-ceiling-into-the-arms-of-swat/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Check out Jessica Freeburg's website and order her new books:  https://jessicafreeburg.com/books/

and check out Jess on Tik Tok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@jessicafreeburgwrites

Make sure you update your Darkness Radio Apple Apps!
and subscribe to the Darkness Radio You Tube page:  https://www.youtube.com/@DRTimDennis

There are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store at our website! . check out the Darkness Radio Store!   https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/

#crime #truecrime #truecrimepodcasts #truecrimetuesday #rachelcorbett #themonsterswemake #murderobsessionandtheriseofcriminalprofiling #criminalprofiling #murder #serialkillers #truecrimebooks #jacktheripper #tedkacynski #theunabomber #tedbundy #splitpersonalities #murderinvestigation #henrymurray #carljung #pascocountyflorida #minorityreport #dumbcrimesstupidcriminals #TimDennis #jessicafreeburg #paranormalauthor #floridaman #drugcrimes #foodcrimes #stupidcrimes #funnycrimes  #sexcrimes 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome into the best in True Crime Podcasting. This is True Crime Tuesday. I'm your host, Tim Dennis.

0:27.7

Got a good show ahead, folks today. Dumb crime, stupid criminals will be on the way in just a bit.

0:31.8

But first, I want to talk to you about an interesting science in true crime these days, and that is

0:39.0

criminal profiling. Our guest today has a really good book out there that I had the privilege

0:45.3

of being able to read and be able to absorb. The book is called The Monsters We Make,

0:51.2

Murder Obsession and the Rise of criminal profiling. My guest is author

0:55.5

Rachel Corbett. And I tell you, folks, there's something at the end of this book that we're

1:01.0

going to talk about today, which makes you think of the movie Minority Report. And I want to jump

1:07.9

into that with Rachel today. I've got chills thinking about it because it has to do with an area of the country that I'm familiar with and I have relatives in, and that's Pasco County, Florida.

1:18.1

So we're going to get to that in the second part of the program today because, again, when you think of the movie Minority Report, you think of loss of freedoms.

1:27.8

And loss of freedoms is something I think we've already started to talk about in this country.

1:32.5

But this has been going on for at least a decade or two.

1:37.0

And we're not talking to anything.

1:39.7

Current administration, we're not talking politics here, folks.

1:42.1

We're talking about actual police crackdown on

1:45.5

people before they've even committed crimes and just through profiling, saying you could potentially

1:51.8

be a criminal, even though you haven't committed a crime. It's just, again, a matter of profiling.

1:57.0

So let's tell you a little bit about our guest and then we'll jump into today's program.

2:02.8

Rachel Corbett is the author of You Must Change Your Life, which won the Marfield Prize,

2:07.7

the National Award for Arts Writing, a features writer at New York Magazine.

2:11.7

Her writing has also appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and Atlantic.

2:16.4

She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Darkness Radio, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Darkness Radio and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.